For Tang Pidi, all his memories of Jizhou were bound up with the Four-Page Academy — that small young person who had come alone to the north’s greatest city, with nothing but books and lessons for company, seemingly unwilling to have anything to do with anyone else.

And so his memories of Jizhou were sparse and unremarkable — sparse to the point of tedium.

The memories left behind in the upper hall of the academy for Tang Pidi were equally sparse: first, first, first, first.

Everyone agreed that Tang Pidi was a freak. Whatever method you tried to beat him, you always ended up beaten. He was like some loophole in the rules of the academy — you felt certain you had worked ten times as hard as him, that your talent was ten times his, and yet when you met him in a contest, you were simply crushed.

The insufferably arrogant Xu Qinglin, in Tang Pidi’s presence, had no presence at all.

After leaving the academy, Tang Pidi had gone to the steppe, and it had been the same story there. The men of the steppe were not so easy to impress — yet Tang Pidi became a loophole in those rules too.

What were the rules of the academy? Roughly: almost all the students came from prominent families, and had been receiving intensive instruction long before setting foot in the academy, whether they loved learning or not — their families had forced it into them. Without that knowledge, how could one live up to such bloodlines? So their starting point was already far above that of children from ordinary homes. Good birth meant better learning, better taste, better results — that was the academy’s logic, and Tang Pidi was simply the exception to it.

What were the rules of the steppe? The children there learned to ride at four or five, were galloping freely at seven or eight, and were fluent on horseback by their early teens. How could any boy from the heartland, who had perhaps never ridden a horse in his life, compete with that? Yet Tang Pidi arrived on the steppe and used his abilities to tell those young men raised in the saddle: *you’re not good enough either.* He became the exception to those rules as well.

Whatever he decided to master, he would be first.

Standing outside the gates of Jizhou, Tang Pidi looked up at those massive carved characters and thought that in all likelihood he would be returning to the academy — it was the most straightforward way to find Li Chi.

The guard at the gate looked Tang Pidi over and held out his hand.

His meaning was perfectly clear: papers, proof of identity, and payment.

Tang Pidi brought his gaze down from above, and looked at the guard. Simply looked at him. His expression was calm.

After perhaps several breaths of silence, the guard’s expression underwent a considerable transformation.

At first, meeting Tang Pidi’s eyes, the guard thought: *is this man an idiot, staring at me like that?* Two breaths later, the guard was alarmed — very alarmed — with a strong sense that something bad was about to happen to him. Tang Pidi’s clothes were plain, yet there was something about him the guard could not describe, some air of refinement and authority.

“You…”

The guard swallowed. “Sir, may I see your identity papers and travel permit, please?”

“I’m going to Prince Yu’s residence,” Tang Pidi replied.

Remarkably, the guard immediately stepped aside.

Tang Pidi produced his travel permit — it was a forgery, one he had made himself, since he was coming in from beyond the passes. The guard never even looked at it. He had already cleared the way.

“Safe travels, sir.”

Tang Pidi made a sound of acknowledgment, said nothing in the way of thanks, and walked his horse into Jizhou City. He didn’t particularly feel he had imposed any great pressure on that guard — but the guard had been quietly certain that one more word from him would have cost him his head.

Strange.

Walking his horse along the main street of Jizhou, Tang Pidi realized now just how unfamiliar the city was to him. In his youth, he had come to Jizhou and lived within the Four-Page Academy, and had almost never stepped outside its gates.

He looked at the buildings lining both sides of the street, watched the people coming and going through Jizhou’s busy lanes, and could not find a single memory that had anything to do with himself.

Just then, he noticed a notice posted on a wall nearby. He walked his horse over for a look, and his gaze went briefly distant.

The people around him were saying that this was a war proclamation penned by Principal Gao, calling for a denunciation of the traitors. But Tang Pidi knew at once that this could not be Principal Gao’s work.

He turned away, already thinking about whether the principal, held at Prince Yu’s residence, might be in any danger.

If he was — what should he do about it?

Following the main road straight ahead would bring him to the academy. He still kept his old academy uniform, and though it no longer fit, he had never been able to bring himself to throw it away.

At the academy gate, Tang Pidi politely asked the gatekeeper about Li Chi. The gatekeeper looked him up and down, then shook his head. “The academy is in session. Outsiders may not come and go as they please. If you’re looking for young Master Li, you’re welcome to wait outside.”

Tang Pidi said nothing more. He walked his horse a little way off and sat down at the roadside, turning something over in his mind: the academy was holding class normally, which meant Principal Gao would probably be back before long — no need for excessive worry.

Then he saw a cart coming from the distance. It was one of the academy dining hall’s supply carts, going out to market — Tang Pidi could still recognize it. The woman sitting up on the cart was called Auntie Wu.

He looked at Auntie Wu. Auntie Wu looked at him.

After a moment of that, Auntie Wu looked away, visibly flustered for no obvious reason.

Tang Pidi rose, walked over, and stepped in front of the cart. The driver looked Tang Pidi over and frowned. “Who are you? Why are you blocking the road?”

Tang Pidi did not answer. He looked directly at Auntie Wu, who would not meet his eyes.

“Who are you planning to harm?” Tang Pidi asked.

Auntie Wu’s color drained from her face. So did the driver’s.

Tang Pidi spoke evenly. “Auntie Wu, you are a kind woman. If you are being coerced, you may nod.”

Auntie Wu turned her head and would not look at him. Her face was as white as paper, without a trace of blood.

“Who do you think you are?!”

The driver leapt down from the cart and pointed a horse-whip at Tang Pidi. “What do you think you’re doing?!”

Tang Pidi was quiet for a moment, then said, as if thinking aloud, “The one who gave himself away is you. You don’t move like a driver.”

The driver lunged into a fury, lashing the whip down at Tang Pidi — and a breath later, the driver was on the ground, felled by a single strike of Tang Pidi’s palm to the back of his neck, lying motionless but for faint groans.

Tang Pidi looked at Auntie Wu. “Who sent him? Who is the target?”

Auntie Wu was too frightened to speak, but she had started to cry.

Tang Pidi held out his hand. “Let me help you down. I’ll walk you home.”

The gatekeeper stood gaping, entirely at a loss as to what to do.

Half an hour later, at Auntie Wu’s house, four men lay on the floor. Tang Pidi sat on the stone step of the courtyard porch and looked at them.

“Is there no one willing to speak first?”

The four of them lay there unable even to rise.

Tang Pidi looked at Auntie Wu and asked, “You don’t know who they serve — they only forced you to put poison in food intended for Li Chi. Is that right?”

Auntie Wu had only told him that these men meant to harm Li Chi, yet Tang Pidi had already guessed at the substance of what they had said without being told. They had not named their employer. They had only said that if Auntie Wu refused, they would kill her entire family.

“Auntie Wu, if you had done what they wanted, they would have killed your family anyway.”

Tang Pidi rose, walked to one of the men, and crouched down. He pressed two fingers to the man’s chest and asked, “Who sent you?”

The man’s face went ugly with fear, but he clenched his jaw and said nothing.

Then Tang Pidi’s two fingers pressed slowly forward into his chest. No matter how the man screamed and wailed, those fingers did not stop — until the screaming stopped, and the man became a corpse.

Then Tang Pidi walked to the second man, crouched down, and pressed two fingers to his chest. “Will you speak?”

The man answered at once. “The Xu Family. Xu Qinglin.”

The name rang a faint bell for Tang Pidi. After a moment, he said, “I seem to remember that one.”

Auntie Wu spoke up from the side. “Young Master Tang, when you were at the academy, you were always first in the upper hall. Xu Qinglin was always second — his family holds a great deal of power…”

The memory came back somewhat — only somewhat, because why would he ever have paid attention to whoever was in second place?

At the time, he had simply paid Xu Qinglin no mind at all. Xu Qinglin had regarded him as his greatest rival — and Tang Pidi had never given a thought to who was second.

“How powerful is the Xu family?”

“They rank in the top three in Jizhou.”

Tang Pidi heard this, nodded, and said, “That seems somewhat inconvenient.”

Then he pressed two fingers into the chest of the man who had just answered him, and killed him as well. The remaining two were already trying to flee — but they couldn’t even stand, so what sort of fleeing was it?

Two breaths later, Tang Pidi looked at Auntie Wu’s husband. “Move the bodies. Load them onto the cart and take them out of the city. They’ll be carrying Xu family waist tokens — search them first, then use the tokens to pass through the gate. The gate guards won’t stop you or check.”

Then he looked at Auntie Wu. “Go back to the academy. Find Li Chi and tell him everything. Tell him not to go to bed too early tonight — I’ll come find him. Might be a little late, might be before dark.”

Then Tang Pidi shouldered his pack and walked out a few steps, then turned back to ask Auntie Wu, “Is there anything to eat?”

Auntie Wu quickly answered, “Yes, yes, there is.”

She ran to the kitchen and came out with food. Tang Pidi looked at it — a basket of steamed buns, which were more familiar to him than Xu Qinglin’s face, since these were the buns he had eaten day after day at the academy.

Auntie Wu’s recipe was the same one she had brought back from the academy dining hall kitchen.

Tang Pidi took the basket, shouldered his pack, picked up the basket, and walked out the door, eating as he went.

Another half hour later, Tang Pidi stopped in front of a blacksmith’s shop. He stood there looking around. The blacksmith smiled at him and asked what he wanted.

Tang Pidi looked for a good while and found that there was not a single decent weapon in the whole shop, and felt somewhat disappointed.

“Someone from the jianghu, friend?”

The blacksmith suddenly asked in a lowered voice, then leaned in further still: “You looking to buy a blade?”

Tang Pidi smiled and shook his head. “Not a blade. I need you to make something else for me.”

The blacksmith said, “There’s no weapon among the eighteen traditional arms I can’t forge. Give me enough silver and I’ll make you a Green Dragon Crescent Blade if you want — only one condition: you can’t say where you got it.”

Tang Pidi examined the blacksmith’s forge fire, then reached in bare-handed and took out a piece of charcoal. He crouched down and drew a shape on the ground.

“I want this made.”

The blacksmith looked at it for a long while, then asked tentatively, “Chopsticks? One or a pair?”

“One.”

Tang Pidi said, “Not chopsticks. An iron skewer. Three chi three. Widest at the handle — roughly as thick as the handle of your hammer there — tapering as it goes forward, the tip as fine and sharp as a needle.”

The blacksmith swallowed, with a growing sense that he had encountered a lunatic.

“When do you need it?”

Tang Pidi reached into his pack and set a silver ingot the size of a fist on the workbench. The blacksmith said nothing more, and immediately handed over his tongs. “Today. You’ll wait here for it.”

—